Il social servizio di news del New York Times, in arrivo per la fine dell'anno.

"We're building something wonderful and amazing in the social news space," said John Borthwick, chief executive officer at Betaworks.

Mr. Borthwick's company has helped nurture TweetDeck, a popular desktop client for Twitter, and Web tools like Bit.ly, a URL shortener, and Chartbeat, a real-time Web analytics service.

The News.me product has been in the works for the last six months and is expected to be out sometime later this year, Mr. Borthwick said. It will initially debut as an iPad application, although a Web version may be introduced at some point.

This announcement allows us to begin the thought process that’s going to answer so many of the questions that we all care about. We can't get this halfway right or three-quarters of the way right. We have to get this really, really right.

New York Times Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. appears close to announcing that the paper will begin charging for access to its website, according to people familiar with internal deliberations. After a year of sometimes fraught debate inside the paper, the choice for some time has been between a Wall Street Journal-type pay wall and the metered system adopted by the Financial Times, in which readers can sample a certain number of free articles before being asked to subscribe. The Times seems to have settled on the metered system.

New York is a city of characters. On the subway and in the streets, from the intensity of Midtown to the intimacy of neighborhood blocks is a 305-square-mile parade of people with something to say. This is a collection of a few of their passions and problems, relationships and routines, vocations and obsessions. A new story will be added weekly.